When the first season of Andor concluded with the late Maarva Andor giving a rousing speech to spark rebellion on Ferrix, Star Wars fans began sleuthing and very quickly developed a theory: that her “fight the Empire!” cry was originally meant to be a bit different.
Namely, that it was meant to drop the first ever f-bomb in Star Wars.
Showrunner Tony Gilroy has confirmed that, yes, in fact, the original script had Maarva cry, “fuck the Empire!” instead. But Lucasfilm said no.
Gilroy thought it worked, and was worth it, and drafted a whole memo to Lucasfilm listing the reasons why he thought so. But the company didn’t budge, and in looking back on it, he’s glad for it. He thinks it was the right call now, after the fact. Speaking with Mashable recently in promotion of season two, Gilroy explained how he feels about all of this, saying that it wasn’t a fight but was just a discussion, like it should be, and added “they were right”. He went on to rave about his working relationship with Lucasfilm.
“The whole experience with Kathy [Kennedy, Lucasfilm president] and Lucasfilm and Disney, all the way through from Rogue One… I mean, nobody has ever messed with us at all. The gamble they’ve taken with us, the way they’ve backed our play, it’s extraordinary. It’s the thing every filmmaker dreams about. They’ve been unbelievable. So yeah, they were right.”
That much shouldn’t be rushed by, either, because of how Lucasfilm has seemed to get a reputation from fans about the difficulty of getting projects made. Andor seems to have been very smooth, and Gilroy speaks very highly of Kathy Kennedy and the entire team. That seems to give him even more confidence that they made the right decision, since they were so willing to work with him on all of it. That means that when they said no on this, it had to have been for good reason.
And Gilroy is able to admit that they were right. I’m glad for this, because although Maarva’s speech does seem to represent an ideal time to drop an f-bomb, I prefer the franchise not using that kind of language as a way of continuing to appeal to all audiences. There’s not much (if anything) that could be gained from using that instead of “fight the Empire!”, at least in terms of narrative emphasis, so there wasn’t really a need to include it. The series was still perfectly powerful without it. So, like Gilroy, I think Lucasfilm made the right decision. Meaning this story will forever be a fun little tidbit of behind-the-scenes Star Wars lore, but not much more.
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